Sony’s 13.3-inch digital paper prototype lets you scribble on e-books

E-readers have become a pretty standardized device in recent years, offering months-long battery life, a display around 6-inches in size, and still no color. Amazon did experiment with a larger Kindle e-reader, but ultimately discontinued it to focus on the 6-inch model. Sony, on the other hand, has decided to experiment with a much larger display and a focus on student use.

An A4-size 13.3-inch prototype “digital paper terminal” has been unveiled by Sony in a bid to improve productivity and learning for students studying at university. It combines a 1200 x 1600 resolution e-paper display that acts as a touchscreen and accepts input from an included stylus. It weighs 385 grams and is only 6.8mm thick, but offers 3 weeks of battery life (if you turn WiFi off).

The prototype can only display PDF documents in its current form, but allows you to scribble notes all over them and save the modified file to the 4GB of included storage. If you need more than that there’s a microSD slot for expansion.

Sony will be offering the device to students at the Waseda, Ritsumeikan, and Hosei Universities in Japan later this year on a trial basis. Depending on how well that goes Sony will finalize the design and plans to offer a commercial version before the end of 2013.

How popular this device proves to be will depend a lot on price. It’s no tablet, but a large book-replacement you can scribble notes on, that has a long battery life, and slides easily into a bag would be of interest to more than just students I think. If Sony can come in under the price of an entry-level iPad then it’s got a chance, but they may instead set a high price and hope educational institutions will buy them in bulk.